This Day In Texas History - April 1

[joe817]

1813 - Spanish governor Santísima Trinidad de Salcedo surrendered the city of San Antonio to forces under José Bernardo Maximiliano Gutiérrez de Lara, commander-in-chief of the filibustering Gutiérrez-Magee expedition. Gutiérrez intended to set up a republican government in Texas and use Texas as a base for operations designed to liberate Mexico from Spanish rule. The scheme ended in August with the defeat of Gutiérrez's successor as head of the provisional government, José Álvarez de Toledo, but the indefatigable Gutiérrez went on to become involved with such filibusters and revolutionaries as Louis Michel Aury, Francisco Xavier Mina, and James Long, among others.

1833 - General Santa Anna, who had once fought on the side of Spain against the Mexican Revolution, was inaugurated as President of Mexico. A revolution in Texas soon required his attention, and the Mexican army was brought under his command to expel Texians engaged in the uprising.

1833 - With Sam Houston and Stephen Austin in attendance, the Second Convention calling for Texas to separate from Coahuila meets at San Felipe on this date in 1833. Austin will be sent to Mexico City with the petition, but will be imprisoned there for inciting insurrection.

1837 - Houston is made the Capitol of the Republic of Texas.

1866 - The first cattle drive to northern markets on the Chisholm Trail occurred. And by the year's end 260,000 cattle had been driven up this route.

1898 - Controversial journalist William Cowper Brann was fatally shot in the back by Tom E. Davis on a Waco street. Brann managed to pull his own gun and kill Davis. Earlier in the decade Brann's newspaper, the Iconoclast, had launched a series of vitriolic attacks, especially on Baptists, Episcopalians, blacks, women, and anything British. He also went after nearby Baylor University, which he called "that great storm-center of misinformation." Brann was subsequently kidnapped on one occasion and beaten on another, and his supporters had a deadly gunfight with Baylor partisans. Davis, who killed Brann, was an irate supporter of Baylor.

1917 - The King of Ragtime, Scott Joplin, died in an New York City hospitial. Born in Texarkana, his "Maple Leaf Rag" sold over a million sheets of music in 1899, a smash hit for its day. His music was featured in the 1973 hit movie "The Sting" staring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, for which the film score received an academy award. Released as "The Entertainer", the theme song from the movie also was a big hit on Billboards Top 100.

1922 - The Sons of the Republic of Texas was founded on this date in 1922.

1923 - Texas Gov. Thomas Mitchell Campbell died in Galveston. Campbell was born in Rusk on April 22, 1856.
He got a job in the Gregg County clerk's office, studying law at night, and in 1878, he started his own law practice in Longview. At the urging of his friend, former Gov. James Stephen Hogg, he ran for governor and was elected in 1906. During his two terms of office, he initiated reforms that included railroad regulation, lobbying restrictions and pure food and drug laws. But his most significant legislation regarded prison reform. Campbell's administration terminated the contract lease system for inmates and called for humane prisoner treatment.

1932 - Actress Debbie Reynolds was born in El Paso. She starred in dozens of movies including "How the West was Won", Pepe, and "Singin' in the Rain". She played the title roll in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", for which she won an Academy Award.

1995 - Following a dismal 1994 season without Nolan Ryan, retired Texas Ranger picture Nolan Ryan, announced on this date in 1995, in a live interview on WBAP in Fort Worth, that he was coming out of retirement and would be joining the Texas Rangers at spring training. The story became breaking news for 3 hours as far away as New York, before the media learned that they had been duped by an April Fools gag cooked up by WBAP's infamous Hal Jay and his good friend Nolan Ryan.